


against your body's borders

by waveridden



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Other, Remix, musings on body horror as romance, nongraphic horror but this IS about a wooden person getting a new face carved so ymmv
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-12 08:20:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29381970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waveridden/pseuds/waveridden
Summary: Yosh brushes his hand against Sebastian's, wooden and unmoving. “Tell me if you need me to stop.”“I won’t need to,” Sebastian says, “but I will tell you.”It is, Yosh supposes, as good of an answer as he’s going to get.(Yosh, Sebastian, and the question of bodies.)
Relationships: Yosh Carpenter/Sebastian Woodman
Comments: 14
Kudos: 25





	against your body's borders

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [inside your blinding light](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28165962) by [marquis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marquis/pseuds/marquis). 



> [shows up two months late with starbucks] did somebody say tree/carpenter romance? time to make a fanfic remix, a thing that is definitely still common practice in the year of our lord 2021. for @marquis, because we were talking about knife romance. title is from "to be alone" by hozier.
> 
> CWs: this is about Yosh sculpting a living being made out of wood - it's not painful, but there are detailed descriptions of Sebastian's eyes, mouth, and hands being carved with sharp objects, and less detailed descriptions of the rest of the body.

The carving is Sebastian’s idea — at least, Sebastian is the first to say it aloud. Yosh has had the thought a dozen times over, kept to himself. They’ve spent time together, days and weeks among the trees and stars, time enough for him to observe them.

Watch: there is a motion in the sky above them, a bird overhead. Sebastian looks up and tries to smile, but their mouth is wooden — not simply wood, but _wooden_ — and cannot make the shape they want. They look down, subdued.

Again: they gesture to show Yosh something, but their fingers will not bend just so, and they move on as though they had never started the thought at all. Or: they cannot close their eyes, or even fully rotate their neck, and must turn their whole body when they’d like the privacy of looking away.

Yosh watches this play out a dozen times in a dozen ways, the limits of hands and body and face. He wants to offer. He refuses to let himself ask.

Sebastian says nothing until a hike, or more of a long meandering walk, when they step too clumsily. The heavy footfall startles a hare that sprints off through the woods, disrupting the peace around them.

“Sometimes,” Sebastian says, a sharpness to it that Yosh hasn’t heard yet, and then they stop short.

“Sometimes?” Yosh says gently..

Sebastian does not quite meet his eyes. “My face belonged to Sebastian Townsend. My body belonged to nobody. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be my own.”

“Would you want that?” Yosh asks. It’s perhaps too sincere. Perhaps invasive.

He’s surprised when Sebastian faces him more fully. “Could you do that?”

“Yes,” Yosh answers, without hesitation. “But would you want—”

“Yes,” Sebastian says. “When can we start?”

Yosh smiles. He can see Sebastian mirroring the motion, wooden lips struggling against wooden cheeks. It feels like watching a fire through smoke: hard to look at, for the wrong reasons. But he can still see the warmth of the smile, brighter than the limits constraining it.

  
  


#

  
  


Sebastian is surprisingly difficult to work with. Not in terms of their body; Yosh has carved enough statues to understand the finesse of joints. But he has also carved enough statues to understand the importance of distinct faces.

He finds mannequin heads to experiment with. He practices features over and over, searching for Sebastian in the shape of an eyelid and the curve of a nostril. The first completed face that he shows Sebastian is the culmination of endless effort, trial and error and trial again.

“I would let you do it now,” Sebastian says, looking at the model. “This seems good enough.”

“Good enough is not good enough,” Yosh says, too surprised to be a reprimand, but Sebastian looks chastised all the same. “This is your face. It should be something you feel strongly about.”

“I have never felt strongly about my face.”

“Now is a chance to learn how.”

Sebastian looks at the model a while longer. Yosh can see more problems the longer he looks at it, proportions that are not quite accurate, eyes that are not completely even. But he holds his tongue and waits.

At last, Sebastian’s fingers trace along the shape of the mouth. The upper lip has a sharp bow to it, one of the more artistic flourishes Yosh had allowed himself. “I like this,” they say quietly. “The shape of it.”

It is an endless cycle of feedback and repeats. Sebastian grows bolder over time, or perhaps more comfortable, pointing out more and more things they approve of. On rare occasions, they will tell Yosh that they dislike his work, the most delightful feedback to receive. He learns to read the tilt of their head, the responses unspoken. He listens to every motion.

Yosh works, steady and repetitive, until he shows Sebastian a model and they say yes to it, with the same decisiveness that they once said they wanted a face. He makes five identical models, refining the features, practicing the shape of them.

And then the real work begins.

  
  


#

  
  


The process begins, after some discussion, with Sebastian’s right hand. They favor their left, Yosh has noticed, although they were quite surprised when he pointed it out. The idea is less about the carving and more about acclimating them the sensation, if there is any. Yosh would hate for them to flinch when he has a gouge against their temple.

He starts with fingernails. He has practiced this, albeit less intently than Sebastian’s face. Much of their body is already defined, sculpture and branch alike, but Yosh has always had a fascination with hands. Perhaps it’s because he works so much with his own. He is determined to ensure that Sebastian’s hands are fully capable.

It’s quiet work, busy work. He defines fingernails and fingertips. In time he switches to shaping palms, smooth and careful planes. He waits for Sebastian to cry out in pain from the gouge or the chisel. They never do.

But at last, there’s no more avoiding it. Yosh brushes his fingers against their thumb, wooden and unmoving. “Tell me if you need me to stop.”

“I won’t need to,” Sebastian says, “but I will tell you.”

It is, Yosh supposes, as good of an answer as he’s going to get.

Each of Sebastian’s fingers is articulated, joints able to move, but the craftsmanship is… shoddy, at best. Their hands are designed to hold a bat or catch a ball. No more, no less.

They don’t react at all as Yosh takes the chisel and drives it into the joint between palm and thumb, loosening some wood. He is waiting for signs of life, things that it feels cruel to look for, swift blinks or sudden breaths. Instead Sebastian watches, looking almost curious, as Yosh carves their thumb out, and then the knuckle into the thumb.

He holds up his own hand, thumb folded across his palm. Sebastian mimics the gesture. Their eyes do not widen — cannot widen — but Yosh can read the set of their shoulders, the wonder in the way they lean forward. “Oh,” they say, and bend their thumb this way and that, rotating their wrist to look at it. “This is movement.”

“It is,” Yosh agrees. “You’ll have four more fingers by the end of the day.”

That’s enough to get Sebastian to hold out their hand again. They are excited, expectant. They are asking, and Yosh lifts his chisel as answer.

Fingers are harder than thumbs: another joint to consider, more detail, more slenderness. Yosh entertains the idea of giving them fingerprints, although that feels a foolish detail to consider before they can fully open their mouth. Instead he bites the inside of his cheek and chisels their fingers apart, one by one.

He has a list of mobility exercises to go through, after he’s finished and the fingers are sanded. Sebastian eschews all of his plans: as soon as Yosh sets down his gouge, they reach for his hand, pressing their palm against his. Yosh allows him, smiling slightly.

Sebastian presses each of their fingertips against Yosh’s in turn and at last laces their fingers together, squeezing tight. “It’s dawn after frost,” they say, and Yosh does not understand what exactly it means, but he squeezes back.

They do not have a problem until Yosh is working on Sebastian’s left hand. He’s carving their middle and ring fingers apart, chisel pressing deeper, when Sebastian says, “Oh.”

“Oh?” Yosh repeats, immediately attentive. “Does it hurt?”

Sebastian looks down at the sharp object wedged between two of their fingers and tilts their head in a gesture that Yosh recognizes as a frown. “No,” they say slowly, “but I can feel that. Keep going.”

“Sebastian—”

“Please,” Sebastian says. “I’d like to know.”

There is a simple answer: a vein of sap running through Sebastian’s arm that happens to end between their fingers. This is an inevitability in the carving, one they had discussed, but it’s still a shock to Yosh when he feels the flow. It thickens against his skin, warm and clinging.

“I can stop,” he says, less offer than statement. He already knows the response.

And sure enough, Sebastian shakes their head. “It doesn’t hurt,” they say, and Yosh doesn’t understand how it couldn’t, how the edge of the chisel feels like nothing. “We can clean it in a moment.”

Yosh takes a breath, not trusting himself to speak. He takes the mallet and drives the chisel deeper. More sap flows out. Sebastian watches.

Cleaning is a more laborious endeavor than Yosh had expected, not because of Sebastian but because of himself. The sap makes it difficult to do his work, to take the amount of care he’d like to. Sebastian is patient as Yosh oils his hands over and over again.

When their left hand is finished, the first thing Sebastian touches is their own right hand, fingers tangling together in a knot of joints and motion. The second thing is Yosh, hand settling on the side of his head, fingertips weaving their way into his hair.

“I can’t feel the texture,” Sebastian says. They sound disappointed.

Yosh wraps a hand gently around their wrist. “We can work on that next,” he promises, and their mouth works into something like a smile.

  
  


#

  
  


He needs to stop, eventually. Most of what he does is detailed work, but he does Sebastian’s arms last, carving out elbows, liberating their shoulder blades.

Yosh wishes, selfishly, that he had finished Sebastian’s face first. He would’ve liked to see the expression on their face, the true expression, the first time they lifted their arms over their head.

Nonetheless: they retire for the evening together. Yosh cleans his workshop and Sebastian watches. Or he assumes they watch. To his surprise, when he gets to the worktable they’ve been sitting on it’s already immaculate, swept clean. Sebastian looks quite pleased with themself; Yosh is achingly fond.

Most evenings they go for walks, and this is no exception. Sebastian is reaching out to touch everything, feeling leaves between their fingers, reaching carefully out to touch a robin alighted in a tree. They do not repeat their dissatisfaction about sensation, but Yosh can see it there, beneath the surface.

At last they find a wild rosebush. Yosh stops and cuts one off carefully, leaving a long stem. “See the way the stem doesn’t bend,” he says. “See the way the petals bruise. Mind the thorns.”

“Do I have to mind the thorns?” Sebastian says, more curious than anything. They take the rose and begin moving it this way and that, squeezing the stem, touching the petals delicately. They’re experimenting with pressure, trying to understand what it is they’re holding.

“I could trouble myself to dig a thorn out from your finger,” Yosh says, put-upon, “if you forced me to.”

He means gently, teasingly, but Sebastian nods seriously. “I will do my best not to trouble you,” they say. There’s a question to it.

“Trouble me as much as you like,” Yosh answers. “Just try not to trouble yourself.”

Sebastian carries the rose with them as they continue walking. Everything they touch now, they seem to compare to either stem or petals. This is not texture, per se, nor is it sensation, but it is as close as Yosh can give them.

  
  


#

  
  


To say Yosh is afraid to carve Sebastian’s face—

Well. He is, of course. He’s practiced another handful of times. He could carve this model in his sleep. And the hands were a much-needed bolster to his confidence. He knows how to carve Sebastian now, how the wood gives way underneath his hands.

But this is Sebastian. And they are trusting Yosh to give them a face, which means vision, a smile, a _self—_

They sit, placidly, on the table. Yosh collects himself and says, “I’m going to begin with the contours.”

First: a forehead, easy enough to smooth over. Then: a nose, and the shape of it is more defined than Sebastian Townsend’s. It takes effort, not just carving from nothing but carving from another person’s face. Eventually: the nose is not quite as practiced, but it is close enough.

Yosh holds up a mirror, just to check. Sebastian lifts a hand and runs the fingertips down the slope of the nose. “Keep going,” they say, in a tone that Yosh could only describe as reverent.

Next: cheekbones, not quite as sharp as Sebastian Townsend’s. After: a chin, reshaped into something more slender. A detour: ears, not clearly defined, as Sebastian doesn’t seem to want them. But Yosh provides the suggestion of them anyways, easy to add detail or wear away.

Eventually he gets to Sebastian’s neck. There’s little carving here, but he sands it down. Sebastian lifts their chin, baring their neck to him with no hesitation.

Yosh bends down, head close to Sebastian’s. He doesn’t speak — he never speaks when working, he rarely feels the need — but it feels now like less of a choice and more of an inability.

He runs his fingers down their throat. He means to check to make sure it’s smooth. Instead he is intoxicated by the feeling of the wood underneath his fingers.

Sebastian is watching him. Yosh forces himself to straighten.

The mouth is next. “Does it hurt?” Yosh says, words drawn out almost involuntarily.

“It is difficult to describe.”

“Might you indulge me?”

Sebastian doesn’t answer at first, so Yosh begins carving their mouth in earnest. The lips are first, that strong shape, the first thing Sebastian had said they wanted. This is easy, muscle memory; Yosh has practiced enough to almost stop thinking as he works. The seam of the mouth is harder. It requires a deeper gouge, a firmer hand. Yosh is almost afraid, despite everything, that this will be the step too far, the step that wounds them.

But Yosh does not wound them. Instead Sebastian opens their mouth and breathes deep. Yosh can see the motion rustling the leaves in their ribs, and he feels pride and vindication and joy and something that he chooses not to put a name to, not yet.

“It feels as though I am covered in mud and clay,” Sebastian says, and Yosh cannot help but smile, brief and quiet. “It feels as though you are brushing it all away.”

Yosh lifts a hand to their cheek, swipes his thumb under their eye. Sebastian watches them, eyes still uncarved, but Yosh can see them breathe in, can feel the motion under their palm. “There is not so much clay left,” he murmurs. “You will be with us soon.”

The eyes are difficult. Sebastian Woodman’s eyes were quite large, but his Sebastian prefers finer features. Yosh has living wood that he can graft on, a gift from the Flowers. He uses it sparingly, but at one point he has no choice but to completely cover one of Sebastian’s eyes and start over.

Sebastian is quiet the whole time, their uncovered eye watching Yosh steadily as he works. It is delicate work, too delicate, but he unearths the shape of their eye eventually. He can spot the precise moment that it turns from sculpture to life, because Sebastian blinks furiously, staring at Yosh.

“Hold still a moment,” Yosh murmurs.

Sebastian is as placid as ever as Yosh smoothes out their eyelid, stopping the rough edges of wood from rubbing together. He runs a fingertip along the seam, testing the smoothness. He only notices Sebastian’s breath quicken because he’s paying careful, painstaking attention.

Their other eye does not require a graft. It does, however, have a vein of sap at the outer corner that Yosh finds halfway through the carving. It almost looks like tears, flowing down Sebastian’s face, but they don’t react at all. “You can keep going,” they say.

“In a moment,” Yosh promises, and goes to find a rag. When he comes back the sap is mostly dry, streaked down their face. Yosh holds Sebastian’s head gently, palm against their chin and fingers high on their throat, as he wipes them clean. Sebastian seems to relax into the touch; Yosh marvels at how much more lively they seem now, with a body that they’ve chosen as their own.

The remainder is easy. Ankles are the most complicated part, trying to make sure they can rotate fully. The rest is planes, thighs and calves, making sure they’re smooth. He finishes easily and steps back.

Sebastian Woodman sits before him, smiling. Yosh’s heart is full to bursting.

  
  


#

  
  


The conversation leading to their first kiss is cautious, detailed. Yosh has had plenty of experience negotiating relationships. Sebastian has not, and so Yosh is as clear as possible with every request, every suggestion. They talk about splinters, and sanding. They talk about all the ways that Yosh might touch Sebastian.

It is not until later in the evening, the two of them curled up together, that Sebastian says, “Can I touch you too?”

Yosh smiles, more startled by the question than perhaps he should be. After all, Sebastian has been curious about everything else. “You may,” he says.

Their fingers begin on his face, palms resting on either side. Sebastian swipes their thumbs across his cheeks and begins to move their hands down, brushing against nose, lips, chin. One thumb presses in the hollow of his throat, the other against his pulse point. Yosh’s breath catches, and Sebastian’s brows furrow. They repeat the pressure and then move on.

It continues on like that for some time. Collarbones: fingers moving along the divot, smoothing down the planes of his shoulders. Wrists: brushing against the veins, strong and sure, and Yosh feels oddly delicate. Sebastian: cautious but not shy, fingers sanded down but still rough to the touch, always waiting for Yosh to nod approval before making contact.

He thinks of the roses, the petals and the stem. He tries to imagine himself mapped out in that same way, laid out beneath Sebastian, a diagram of bones and pressure points.

At last, Sebastian pulls their hands back. Yosh smiles. “You’ve had your fill?”

“For now,” Sebastian says. “I’m sure I will have more questions later.”

“Of course,” Yosh says, ever soft, ever indulgent. He is rewarded with the sight of Sebastian smiling before they lean in to kiss him. It is brief and careful, and it is incandescently loving.

Sebastian kisses with their eyes open, watching him. Yosh lets them, happily.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm @waveridden on Tumblr and Twitter, come say hi!


End file.
